Abstract
Hormones and organotins are some of the chemicals that have been identified as endocrine disruptors. This means that they can interfere with the normal production, transport, and regulation of hormones in vertebrates and invertebrates. The main source of entry of most endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) into the environment are conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) which do not exhaustively remove EDCs during treatment. Analysis of EDCs in the environment has generally been done using chromatographic methods which can suffer from loss of selectivity in complex matrices. Hence sample preparation is still an important part for the detection of EDCs due to their low environmental concentrations. The aim of this project was to explore solid and liquid phase based techniques for the extraction and preconcentration of hormones and organotins as well as adsorptive removal of steroid hormones in aqueous samples. Two analytical methods for the determination of hormones in water samples were developed based on solid phase extraction (SPE). Firstly, a β-cyclodextrin decorated magnetic activated carbon adsorbent was prepared and characterised. The adsorbent was then used to develop a magnetic solid phase microextraction method to extract and preconcentrate steroid hormones in waste and river water samples...
Ph.D. (Chemistry)